I would frame the question as, "Who gains from the ouster of an honest man?"

5:05 pm January 31, 2012

Bravo Czech Republic! wrote:

France and Germany will gain from this pact. Everyone else will lose. There will be a Franco-German Empire. Bravo to the Czechs for standing up against this.

6:07 pm January 31, 2012

Luboš Motl wrote:

Good text. I still think that other nations generally overestimate the power of eurofanatics over Czech politics. In 1938 or 1939, we were offered an agreement or annihilation by Germany, so after lots of hesitation, we agreed. But that's not the case today because we really don't face annihilation.

I like balanced budgets and past generations, especially in Western Europe, were living beyond their means. But a balanced budget every year is constraining and stupid. The one-year time scale is totally arbitrary and arguably too short. Moreover, nations (and people) with lower levels of debt obviously may afford to create some debt at some time. The pact pays no attention to the question whether someone can actually afford debt or not. It is an egalitarian nonsense detached from reality. We have a very fiscally prudent government right now and we don't need to be led by someone or constrained by ad hoc rules.

Moreover, the system of fines will be totally dysfunctional. If someone runs a 10% of GDP budget deficit every year, he won't worry about changing this figure by 0.1% up, either. Moreover, such extra "fines" will reinforce the idea that the EU has to pay for anything and any (Greek or another) hole. If there's no credible threat that people's lives will really deteriorate if their government is fiscally irresponsible, the government is bound to be irresponsible. The pact doesn't offer any such credible threat; on the contrary, it is a way to worry "less" about the excessive deficits. Deficits have been constrained by many EU treaties and all of them so far have become just pieces of toilet paper. There's no reason to think that this pact will be any different. Moreover, the countries with the highest budget deficits are literally unable to make it zero this year: austerity not only reduces expenses but also slows down the economy and lowers the revenues. It's not easy to win such a spiral battle without a clear bankruptcy that just allows the government to die, and not to pay pre-agreed pensions to the millions of Greek dead people, pedophiles, and other things that Greece spends most of the German money for.

Moreover, the prime minister received an analysis of the pact by top Czech constitutional experts. They made it clear that the pact creates a very dangerous precedent that forces various countries to vote in agreement with the majority of the eurozone, which subsequently becomes a majority of the EU, so all other votes are totally suppressed. This is against the basic EU law and will be challenged. Taken to the limits, this precedent will allow arbitrary powers and competences of the whole EU institutions to be hijacked by totally out-of-EU institutions based on assorted international treaties.

I am confident that the euroskeptics would convince most of the Czech citizens to vote for an EU exit in a referendum that would be about our continuation in the ever more non-democratic EU. I've been pro-European but I am already closer to a "No" in a future EU membership referendum.

At the same moment, it's absurd to talk about "threats for Czechia". No one is going to break the single market with Czechia etc. because that would harm Germany (and others) as much as it would harm Czechia. Switzerland is also allowed to have business with Germany. All this fearmongering is absurd. We've managed to make a Velvet Divorce with Slovakia without a single broken window - which also included an overnight splitting of a common currency - so I don't expect many problems in our possible EU exit or anything of the sort.

Czechs are atheists and kind of skeptics. The excitement with which some people are mindlessly building a new European empire is way too similar to a similar construction of the Third Reich or the Soviet bloc. Err one, err twice - most people just don't want to behave equally mindlessly for the third time. This is not just Czech President Vaclav Klaus. The idea of behaving as a little poorer new Switzerland is probably more attractive than the idea of being at the cutting-edge of assorted and mostly irrational politically correct proposals by German or French Chancellors or presidents.

See my blog, The Reference Frame (Google for it), for other comments.

4:31 am February 2, 2012

Poli wrote:

Czechs said no to German led invasion of their sovereignty. Not again.

Bravo !

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